A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘What now!’ Ingram put his coat back on the coat peg. ‘Maurice, if you’re pushing a personal agenda, so help me …’

  ‘Two minutes,’ Mundy promised. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

  Mundy left the offices of the CCRT and took the lift down to Criminal Records.

  ‘Once again, you’re down in the depths,’ Stanley Kinross greeted Maurice Mundy. ‘This is getting to be a regular thing. You’ll be wanting a trace?’

  ‘Yes … please.’ Maurice Mundy returned Stanley Kinross’s smile. ‘Just one more, Stan, then we’ll have that drink. It’s a geezer by the name of Tipton.’

  ‘Tipton.’ Stanley Kinross wrote the name on his notepad.

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy confirmed, ‘William Henry Tipton. He’s about fifty years old … about … probably one year either side of that.’

  ‘OK.’ Kinross looked at the name he had written down.

  ‘You’ll know him – he’s got plenty of track,’ Mundy advised.

  ‘Well, if he’s in there, I’ll find him.’ Kinross turned and walked from the Criminal Records reception desk. He returned a few moments later and handed Mundy a computer printout. ‘He’s known all right – one heavy-sounding geezer … Long list of previous … each and every conviction is for violence.’

  ‘Black Country Bill,’ Mundy read the printout.

  ‘Home address is in Dudley,’ Kinross remarked. ‘Not my favourite part of the world. He’s presently believed to be in East London.’

  ‘Women are referred to as “wenches” up there.’ Mundy grinned. ‘So I am told.’

  ‘Really!’ Kinross gasped. ‘Better not let the politically correct brigade hear about that. “Wenches”, indeed, that would not amuse my wife. He’s a big geezer,’ Kinross added. ‘Twenty stones of him. You’ll need help if you’re going to bring him in. So go carefully, Maurice.’

  ‘I will. Bethnal Green …’ Mundy glanced over the printout. ‘Dudley to Bethnal Green. Hardly a man on his way up in the world.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Kinross echoed, ‘and by way of many of Her Majesty’s guesthouses.’

  ‘Many,’ Mundy read, ‘but yes, I’ll proceed with caution.’

  ‘Can I ask why you’re interested in him, Maurice?’ Kinross asked. ‘I’m just curious. He’s a low-life thug and he’s in his fifties, but that printout reads like it’s the profile of a bloke with the emotional development of your average nine-year-old.’

  ‘He silenced someone who was interested in a guy that I am interested in,’ Mundy explained.

  ‘Silenced?’ Kinross spoke softly, ‘As in murdered them?’

  ‘No, as in frightened them into silence,’ Mundy further explained.

  ‘So then you must tread extremely carefully, Maurice.’ Kinross’s voice developed a serious tone.

  ‘I will, but I am not a young woman straight out of university, which was the profile of the victim he silenced. I won’t frighten that easily. In fact, if he tries to silence me it will only confirm my suspicions.’

  ‘Still … softly, softly, Maurice. You promised me a beer, as you have just said.’ Kinross’s voice retained its serious tone. ‘And I want to collect it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mundy held eye contact with Kinross, ‘I fully intend to keep my promise. I like a glass of beer and a chat as much as you do.’

  The journey from London to HM Prison Blundeston was undertaken within a difficult silence which had developed between an angry Tom Ingram and an uncontrite Maurice Mundy. Ingram, at the wheel, drove slowly and steadily, and Mundy contended himself by watching the road ahead of them or gazing idly to his left at the flat fields of East Anglia. Upon arriving at the prison they were escorted to an agent’s room and invited to take a seat within. The cheery prison officer said, ‘I’ll send for him. He’ll be brought down from his landing. He seems to be in a talkative mood today. It’s like he is very anxious to unburden himself of something.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds encouraging.’ Ingram sat at the table. ‘That’s the sort of thing we want to hear. It means that our journey will not be wasted.’

  ‘Yes, very chatty.’ The prison officer turned to go. ‘I don’t think that this will be at all a wasted trip for you two gentlemen. Anyway, I’ll just go and send for him.’

  Tom Ingram sat while Maurice Mundy continued to stand, and the awkward silence between them persisted for a matter of minutes until the calm of the prison was suddenly shattered by a deafening, nerve-shredding ringing of an alarm bell, over which cries of ‘assistance!’, ‘assistance!’ could be heard followed by the sound of running feet … many, many feet.

  ‘I hope …’ Tom Ingram broke the silence which existed between him and Maurice Mundy.

  ‘I hope not also,’ Mundy replied. ‘I do hope not, but I am afraid … I have a feeling that it is … that it will be … that he has …’

  ‘Inviting us up with the promise of a statement.’ Ingram sighed. ‘A talkative attitude so no one will suspect or fear … classic … it’s just classic.’

  ‘We couldn’t have seen it coming.’ Mundy leaned back against the wall. ‘No one could have seen it coming.’

  ‘It still may not be him.’ Ingram laid a clenched fist gently on the tabletop.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes raised, Tom.’ Mundy drummed his fingertips against the wall. ‘The hairs on my old wooden leg tell me that it will be him.’

  The two men once again fell into a silence, although this time the silence contained a bond between them which replaced the ill feeling. Thirty minutes elapsed and then the cheery prison officer who had escorted Mundy and Ingram to the agent’s room once again entered. This time he looked to Mundy to be crestfallen and ashen-faced. He held a brown manila envelope in his left hand. He sat heavily in the chair across the table from Tom Ingram. He remained silent for a moment and then said, ‘I suppose you two gentlemen can guess what has happened. You don’t need me to spell it out for you …?’

  ‘Cassey’s topped himself,’ Ingram said. ‘We heard the commotion and you don’t exactly look like the happiest man on the planet.’

  ‘He slit his wrists,’ the prison officer informed Ingram and Mundy. ‘He seems to have snapped his toothbrush handle and pierced himself with the jagged edge. He seems to have been very determined.’ The prison officer held the envelope. ‘He left this for Mr Ingram.’

  ‘That’s me,’ Ingram said, reaching for the envelope.

  ‘We read it, we had to,’ the prison officer advised, handing it to Ingram. ‘It makes no sense to us.’

  Tom Ingram opened the envelope and extracted a small sheet of paper. He read the note then passed it behind him to Maurice Mundy. Mundy took the note. It read:

  This way I cheat the prison grounds. You’ll find Ollie at 24 Lumley Walk, Chelmsford.

  ‘It means,’ Mundy explained as he handed the note back to Tom Ingram, ‘that this way he’ll be buried in sanctified ground; he won’t be a convicted murderer interred in prison grounds.’

  ‘I see.’ The prison officer held his head down. ‘Funny how a man’s mind can turn when he’s locked in a little space for many hours a day. I’ll have to take the note back with me.’

  ‘Of course.’ Tom Ingram handed the note and envelope to the prison officer.

  ‘Who’s “Ollie”?’ The clearly much-shaken prison officer reread the note. ‘It made no sense to us … “Ollie”? Is that another suspect or something?’

  ‘It’s our name for his partner … they were a two-man crew. We didn’t know the identity of his partner,’ Ingram explained, ‘so we called him “Oliver”.’

  ‘“Oliver Hardy”,’ Mundy added, ‘after his description. Can we have use of a phone, please? We’ll have to notify the Chelmsford police of this and of the address of his … mate. It’s their old pigeon now. Our job’s done.’

  ‘All done and dusted.’ Tom Ingram slowly and casually stood up. ‘Just the paperwork now – the jolly old paperwork to be done.’

  Later that night, while walking hom
e from a quiet and a reflective evening in the pub, Maurice Mundy found it to be true that when a person is dying the last sense that leaves them is that of hearing. Touch, speech, smell, taste all go … one by one, and hearing also goes, but is also always the last to leave, as consciousness fades and death envelops one. He was, as he recalled, walking slowly up Lidyard Road with the sound of the traffic on Archway Road hissing on wet tarmac when he then heard a sudden scuffling sound, followed by two rapid steps. He half turned as a blow to the rear of his head knocked him to the ground. He felt a foot impact with his stomach and managed to grab naked flesh near his attacker’s ankle and scratch the flesh with his fingernail as the foot was withdrawn. He then felt a second blow to his head, but this one was much, much more powerful than the first blow, which had caused his knees to buckle. He felt then that he was lapsing into sleep as a darkness engulfed him and his sight faded. He felt himself drifting away and heard a voice say, ‘Is that enough?’ A second voice answered, ‘Yes, no one can survive that. Now we walk … just walk … a man and a wench … just walk, it won’t look iffy.’ Then Maurice Mundy heard no more.

  Maurice Mundy heard no more, that is, until he heard a soft clatter of metal on metal, an admonishing female voice say ‘hush!’ and a second voice, also female, say, ‘sorry, sorry’. Minutes later, light penetrated the darkness and he saw a high ceiling again in a significantly dimmer light but heard no sound … and darkness then took him into her dreadful maw yet again. When the darkness once again left him he saw a woman standing beside him wearing a cap and a blue blouse. The woman glanced at him and he thought she looked worried. She turned and walked away and he heard her say, ‘Sister! Sister!’ A few moments later a second woman approached him, put her head close to his and said, ‘Can you hear me?’ Mundy nodded his head slowly in response. The second woman smiled and said, ‘Good, you can understand me … that is a good sign … a very good sign. You’re in hospital. You’ve had a bit of a bang on your head but you’re safe now … all very safe … safe as safe can be.’ She smiled again and then she withdrew, leaving Maurice Mundy alone.

  Slowly, his senses returned. The smell of the hospital ward. The sounds, the touch of the coarse blankets. Later, a tall, youthful doctor called on him.

  ‘You know, Mr Mundy …’ the doctor had a warm voice, Mundy thought, and he also had a polished bedside manner. He felt reassured by the doctor’s presence, ‘… if anyone ever calls you a numbskull or a thickhead in future, you can tell them how right they are. You see, you have an abnormally thick skull. There is a condition known as an eggshell skull where the skull is abnormally thin and even a gentle bump on the head can prove fatal, but you – you have just the opposite condition. You will have quite a groove across the top of your skull for the rest of your life, but you’ll have a life … and if you can understand what is being said to you, and Sister Bateman told me that you understood her when she asked if you could hear her, then that means that not only will you live, but you have not suffered any brain damage.’ The doctor, who Mundy noted by his lapel badge was called Dr Geeson, paused. ‘Any normal skull would not have been able to withstand that blow. You were lucky your attacker didn’t follow it up with further blows. Three or four such blows would have been fatal. But whatever he hit you with was very long, heavy and solid. It is often the way of it that people don’t know that they have abnormally thin or abnormally thick skulls until they sustain a head injury. But anyway, you must rest now. Is there anyone we can contact for you?’

  ‘Two people,’ Mundy replied. ‘Just two people. I can let you have the addresses of both.’

  ‘All right,’ Dr Geeson smiled, ‘we’ll do that for you. Someone will come along and take their addresses. You have a police officer waiting outside your room. This is an enclosed room within a ward. We usually use it for barrier nursing or VIPs and I reckon you count as a VIP. The police certainly seem to think so. The ambulance crew who picked you up off the pavement found your police officer’s warrant card when they looked for something to identify you, and Scotland Yard insisted on putting a constable outside your door. We found blood under your fingernails. We sent it to the forensic science laboratory. If your attacker is known to the police his DNA will be on file … it will be enough to convict him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s known all right,’ Mundy replied. His mouth felt dry and then he groaned loudly as his head suddenly felt as though it was being split open. ‘He’s well known.’

  Dr Geeson smiled. ‘You’ll have a bit of a sore head for a few days. We’ll give you some painkillers for that. You’ll be detained for a day or two, just until we’re sure there are no time delayed consequences. Then, with a bit of luck, you’ll walk out of here.’

  The following day, Roberta Loss sat in the upright chair beside Maurice Mundy’s bed, sharing the bag of grapes she had bought for him and talking about inconsequential matters when there was a gentle tap on the door. The door was opened and Janet Thackery entered the room wearing a comfortable to the eye, pastel-blue raincoat and a ready smile.

  ‘Oh …’ Janet Thackery halted at the threshold of the room, ‘I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?’

  ‘No, no … not at all.’ Mundy levered himself up in the bed. ‘Janet, this is my daughter, Roberta. Roberta, please meet Janet. Janet is …’

  ‘A good friend,’ Janet Thackery explained. ‘A very, very good friend.’ Roberta Loss stood up and the two women shook hands.

  Eagerly.

  The two men sat facing each other across a table, staring at each other. They sat in an awkward silence. The room was spartan, upright chairs either side of a small table. The walls were painted a uniform cream. A slab of opaque glass was set high into the wall. A filament bulb behind a Perspex screen provided the illumination.

  ‘I heard that.’ William Tipton broke the silence. ‘I heard that the criminal and their victims are going to be brought together so the victim can make an impact statement. I heard that on the radio. I just didn’t expect it so soon.’ Tipton spoke in a heavy Black Country accent, pronouncing ‘so’ like he was referring to a female pig. Mundy found the accent unpleasant to his ears, as Geraldine Chisholm had earlier described it as being. ‘I thought it was supposed to happen after the guilty verdict.’ Tipton continued, pronouncing ‘verdict’ as ‘var-dict’.

  ‘Oh …’ Maurice Mundy inclined his head to the door of the room, ‘… they don’t know I’m your victim. They wouldn’t let me see you if they knew. I just showed my warrant card, said I wanted to see you and they brought you up from the cells. They expressed surprise that I was alone because coppers visit in pairs, but I said it wasn’t an interview as such, it was just to confirm a couple of minor points since you’re pleading guilty.’

  ‘Yes, it’s all I can do, my brief says.’ Tipton spoke mildly. ‘He says you’ve got me bang to rights.’

  ‘Yes, we have, the police have … all that lovely DNA evidence.’ Mundy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Pleading guilty … well, that’s your only option, William. It would be extremely foolish to plead not guilty.’

  ‘That’s what my brief says.’ William Tipton looked down and to his left. ‘I didn’t feel the scratch at the time, I only noticed it the next morning, then I knew I was in real bother. I knew they’d scrape under your fingernails and I knew my DNA was on file. I couldn’t run anywhere so I went to the boozer … then I went to the Caledonian Road and hired a brass. I knew I wouldn’t be doing much of either for the next twenty years.’

  ‘The brass you hired,’ Mundy asked, ‘it wasn’t a mixed race girl, by any chance?’

  ‘No, she was a young white wench,’ Tipton replied. ‘Very young … very white.’

  Mundy sighed with relief.

  ‘Why?’ Tipton asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Mundy held up his hand. ‘It’s not important. So you’re pleading guilty?’

  ‘Yes.’ William Tipton was a large, well-built man with a mop of black hair. Mundy easily saw how he’d gravitate to the life of violent crime, making
a living as a persuader or as an enforcer. ‘Like I said … legal advice … but even so, the person I attempted to chill was a rozzer, a serving police officer, so I’m still looking at a twenty-year stretch, at least. My brief says that at the moment British justice is tending towards longer sentences.’

  ‘It appears indeed to be the case,’ Mundy agreed. ‘It’s a reaction to a period of lenient sentences which have brought complaints from all sides, all quarters … except criminals themselves, of course.’

  Tipton heaved a laugh. ‘Aye … they, we … wouldn’t complain. We wouldn’t complain at all. But if I get twenty years, well, I’ll be in my mid-sixties when I get out, even if I get parole after fifteen years. That’s my life over. I’ll come out to a state pension and … nothing else. What a wasted life.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy nodded in agreement, ‘you have to look at it like that. I’ll be on the outside and you’ll be on the inside.’

  ‘I’ve been inside before … but twenty years.’ Tipton closed his eyes. ‘Twenty years of top security … of Category-A living, and Belmarsh. It’s a tough prison.’

  ‘Yes, so I have heard.’ Mundy glanced up at the opaque slab of glass. ‘I’ve heard that it is no holiday camp in here.’

  ‘There are some bad boys in here.’ Tipton opened his eyes. ‘Some very hard old boys.’

  ‘You should be able to take care of yourself, I would have thought.’ Mundy sat back in his chair. ‘I mean, you’re not exactly a lightweight, are you, William?’

  ‘No, but they use the gang system,’ Tipton explained. ‘I can handle one … perhaps two. But five or six coming at you all with homemade weapons … you’re constantly watching your back. All the time. You can never relax. Not for a second. Being in here with you is the first time I’ve felt safe all day.’

  Mundy nodded. ‘You’re in a right old mess, William. You really need to start working for yourself.’

  ‘That’s what my brief says.’ Tipton sighed. ‘He says plead guilty and demonstrate contrition. From day one, he says, show a contrite attitude, nothing but contrition. Only that will get you an early parole. So I said, “Yes, OK, I’ll show contrition”, but I don’t know what contrition means.’